The following poem by Karmishtha Krishna from Pune was selected as a commendable mention in Wingword Poetry Prize 2020
This is not a poem.
It is a vivid memory of two girls from 2004
One nearly five, the other nearly six
One with a bob cut, the other with a tight oily braid
One who hated going to school
And the other, who never had a chance to.
One was me, the other was our helper’s daughter
We spent our days
Dancing around a white wooden table on a green grassy lawn
Nurturing a friendship that was too difficult for others to imagine.
‘Two polar opposite DNA strands can’t helix up together’, they said
‘Those who can afford new clothes every month mingle only amongst themselves’, they said
And so, she began to mingle with only those
To whom the fortunate ones donated their old clothes
And so, I gradually stopped sitting by the glass window
Waiting for her to come by holding her mother’s old, ripped saree
Waiting for her mother to salute mine and watch the mothers scowl
As we galloped to our little corner -
But before I knew it, it was all over.
I moved on and made new friends every dusk
And began sipping from porcelain teacups
And she, was sent to Nepal
For a more ‘disciplined’ upbringing
And sadly, I have nothing more to recall.
But this, is not a poem.
It is a painful memory of two friends from 2004
Who were scarred by differences in privilege
Which I, a child of the gentry refused to remember
Until I heard that she’d come back in 2018.
And I ran to the glass window once again
To get just a glimpse of my long-lost friend
And there she was.
Brown and beautiful as ever, with her tight oily braid
I saw the child in her alive
The little fingers tightly grasping an old, ripped saree
But wait –
It wasn’t her smile, it was her child’s.
She was now a mother.
Let me remind you - that this, is not a poem.
It is a memory of two coming of age girls from 2018
I, who carried the weight of board exams
And cribbed about the heavy burden
And she, who carried the weight of a baby and an abusive husband
And silently swallowed all her pain
This is a memory of the day
When two childhood friends met after fourteen years
Through a glass window
That somehow didn’t shatter that day -
With screams that echo
When they cross each other in the colony even today
Without a smile, or a word.
You see, this is not just a poem.
This is an ode to two girls from 2004
Way before one of them
Was any different from the other.